Family struggles to make ends meet as baby fights for life

Josh Zimmermann and his wife, Lindsay Aiello, rest by the window in their hospital room at The Children's Hospital on Tuesday in the Fetal Care Center in Aurora. Aiello was recovering after giving birth to the their daughter J'Lynn. Doctors had to operate on J'Lynn due to a heart defect which impedes the development of the heart’s left ventricle. J'Lynn wouldn’t have been able to live outside the womb without surgery during delivery.

Lindsay Aiello looks at the window as she holds hands with her husband, Josh Zimmermann, while they sit in their hospital room at The Children's Hospital in Aurora. Once Aiello went into labor doctors performed a two-hour procedure where the baby was partially removed from Aiello’s womb to repair the heart defect.

The couple has set up the Hope for J’Lynn Foundation fund through Wells Fargo Bank where donations can be made to help the family with medical and living expenses. Donations can be made at Wells Fargo Bank to the Hope for J’Lynn Foundation fund, with the account number 5619255747.

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The week before Christmas, Lindsay Aiello went in for her third and final ultrasound of her pregnancy, and her doctor gave her news she wasn’t prepared to hear.

The doctor asked the couple to go to Platte Valley Medical Center for a follow-up ultrasound because something appeared amiss with the baby’s heart. They transferred her to Children’s Hospital in Denver to talk with heart specialists who told her the baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a heart defect which impedes the development of the heart’s left ventricle, and the baby wouldn’t be able to live outside the womb without several serious heart surgeries.

Before they found out the news, they said they had already settled on a name for their new daughter — J’Lynn Heaven Zimmermann, incorporating their two names into one.

The couple was given three options: a fetal intervention procedure to place a stent in the baby’s heart, an exit procedure during birth to create a hole in the heart to relieve building pressure, or the third option — delivering J’Lynn normally and holding her in their arms until she died.

The doctors recommended Aiello have a fetal intervention, where doctors would stick a long needle through her womb and into the heart of the baby and place a stent to relieve pressure building up from the baby’s heart defect.

They learned they would need to travel to Houston for the procedure.

“We bought the tickets out there right after buying Christmas presents for the family,” Zimmermann said. “It was a hard time, but we made the best of it. It’s just a card that was dealt.”

The couple lives in Greeley, where they are raising four kids, but J’Lynn would be their first baby together. Zimmerman had been working in the oil fields for the past five years, while Aiello stayed home to be with the kids.

The two departed for Houston on New Year’s Eve. Doctors performed the fetal intervention Jan. 3, using a balloon to expand J’Lynn’s heart to make room for the stent, but the balloon caught on the stent on the way out, knocking it out of place. Having just barely made the 32-week cutoff for the procedure, doctors decided it would be too risky to go back in and try to adjust the stent, Zimmermann said.

“We were able to do option one, which didn’t work out, so now we’re on option two,” he said, as the couple prepared themselves for the second option, a high-risk exit procedure. In the procedure, doctors open up the mother and hold the baby outside the womb long enough to surgically remove the stent from the baby’s heart and make a hole in the heart to relieve pressure — all while the baby is still attached by the mother’s umbilical chord.

“We have outstanding support, and I think we have some of the best individuals as doctors in the nation backing us up, but when you look in these peoples’ eyes, with all their concern and logic, they tell us that they cannot promise life,” Zimmermann said. “Life is hard enough as it is, let alone to have to go through this. You don’t know what to prepare for.”

To make matters worse, the two said they are broke. Zimmermann said he’s been forced to walk away from his $28-an-hour job as an oil worker to be with his wife and kids.

“We’re taking it day-by-day, but I refuse to let my family fall apart. Now we’re behind on rent. We’re losing our home. We’re losing everything. We had to pawn some of our stuff just to get gas so we could go to Denver,” Zimmermann said. “But we’re going to bounce back. We’re strong people. This is just what we’re going through.”

He said his other kids didn’t know about the baby’s distress before the birth, but enjoyed talking to the baby and seeing her move in her mom’s belly.

“Our younger daughter loves it. She loves to talk to J’Lynn,” Zimmermann said while Aiello was still pregnant. “Our boys freak out because mommy’s stomach is lumping and moving. With other pregnancies I’ve been through I don’t remember this much movement. It gives us hope.”

The delivery

Aiello’s exit procedure was scheduled for Valentine’s Day and she and Zimmermann were staying at the Colorado Fetal Care Center at Children’s Hospital in Denver in the weeks leading up to the procedure, until Aiello’s water unexpectedly broke last Saturday.

“Everything happened really fast,” Aiello said in her room at the fetal care center Tuesday. “They put a breathing mask over me and said ‘by the way, you’re going to be asleep in five seconds.’ They didn’t even really give me a chance to think about it, which was good because I was nervous as it was.”

Zimmermann was in Greeley with his kids the morning he heard his wife was going into labor. He grabbed his camera and made it to the hospital while she was still in the operating room.

The next thing Aiello said she remembers is waking up next to her husband, who told her the procedure went as planned and the baby made it through.

Doctors were able to remove the stent from J’Lynn’s heart and make the hole to relieve pressure during the two-hour procedure where the baby was partially removed from Aiello’s womb, but still connected to her mom’s oxygen-rich blood flow.

James Jaggers, named by 5280 Magazine as one of Denver’s top doctors in 2012 — and a man Zimmermann calls a “superhero” — performed the procedure. J’Lynn was born with a full head of hair, and weighed just under 6 pounds and measured 18 inches, Aiello said.

The couple had to wait five hours for the chance to see their newborn baby.

“J’Lynn was only hours old,” Zimmermann said. “You aren’t prepared mentally for such a thing. There are so many things hooked up to her. You want to pick her up and hold her but you really can’t.”

The day after the operation, J’Lynn opened her eyes after hearing her parents talking to her in the ICU, another moment the two said gave them hope. Despite the operation going as planned, doctors have cautioned the couple that the coming days will be a trial for the newborn, who is still unable to perform most of her vital functions on her own.

“It’s going to be difficult, she’s up and down, but she’s remaining stable,” Aiello said. “You just want to kiss her and hold her, it’s so hard.”

Doctors say J’Lynn will likely need three more major heart surgeries by the time she is 6 years old, but are waiting to plan the next one until the baby is stronger and able to breathe and support herself better on her own. Zimmermann said J’Lynn will likely need annual “tune-ups” to make sure her heart is still functioning properly.

“It’s just depending on her. She’s living hour-by-hour right now,” Zimmermann said. “She’s fighting. You really have to take a deep breath when you go down to see her.”

The hospital released Aiello Wednesday, but doctors say J’Lynn will need to remain at the fetal care center for 6 months to a year while doctors monitor her condition.

“This is home for her and we’re OK with that,” Zimmermann said. “It’s just getting here will be the challenge, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll get over that bridge; we’ve crossed many bridges already.”

Zimmermann said he left on good terms with his employer and may be able to get his job back once he’s able to leave his wife and newborn’s side, but with the baby’s health in question, he doesn’t know when that might be. In the meantime, the couple will have to deal with being evicted from their house and the financial burden of being split between Greeley and Denver to be close to their new daughter.